Turning Centuries and New Beginnings

I have a story to tell you...might take me a few days. Hoping you'll enjoy it...thanks for indulging me!

It started back at the turn of the century. No, not that century. Not the one where we all sucked in a deep breath and squeezed our eyes tightly shut as the clock slipped from 11:59 to 12:00...and then cautiously peeked one eye open to see if everything carried on as it should. The year when we were relieved to find lights and computers still marching forward and all our Y2K worries unfounded.

The turn of the century before that. The year when William McKinley was president, when Hawaii became an official US territory and when Milton Hershey introduced the milk chocolate Hershey bar.

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As you can see, it shaped up to be a good year...made even better by a little something else that will never make the "big lists."

That was the year that...without the aid of Pinterest or library books or HGTV, some man...whose name I don't even know...took a dream from his mind and made it real.

He purchased a tiny sliver of land and built a house.

The American dream.

His America didn't look like mine. His world didn't yet know about vacuum cleaners, air conditioners, teddy bears, crayons, teabags or the Model T Ford. And chances are good, he didn't own a car at all.

Yet somehow, in what would seem like poverty to me today, he built a house. A box propped up with bricks at each corner and the hot and cold air of Indiana flowing freely beneath its floor.

I wonder what that box looked like when it was first constructed. I wonder about that man...if he had a wife...kids...someone to share his dream with. Someone to look at his sketches on paper and catch the excitement gleam in his eye when he shared his new idea. I wonder how many rooms the house had and how many years went by before he could afford the luxury of a single, exposed light bulb to hang from the center of each room's ceiling.

I wish I knew that man. I wish I knew his name. I wish I could sit down with him and ask him to show me those dreams sketched out on paper and what he envisioned when he captured the American dream. When a tiny piece of land became his and a crude box of a house was propped up on top.

And if I could meet him, I would say....Sir...thank you for dreaming. Thank you for making your dream come true. Thank you for taking a risk in a world where you didn't have much in the way of any kind of resource. 

Thank you for building our house.